Cadel Evans: A long ride to the top step

He's been a professional cyclist for twenty years and has stood on the top step of many podiums, but never has he been elevated to the heights he's experiencing at the moment.

Winning the Tour de France does that.

Early dirt

Cadel Evans started out racing mountain bikes in 1990, quickly dominating age group titles and rising through the ranks to represent Australia at the sport's Olympic debut, the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.

Riding on an AIS scholarship, he claimed his first major international win at the New Zealand round of the 1997 World Cup up a contract with the international Volvo Cannondale team, and dominating the 1998 season.

Evans won the mountain bike World Cup series twice, in 1998 and 1999, but was not able to achieve the same result at World Championship level, with a string of second places, often due to the bad luck of punctures or crashes in closing laps - so near so many times.

He was disappointed with his seventh place at the Sydney Olympics, the home games having been the sole focus of a young rider already at the top of his sport.

Road

That Cadel took to the road was not really surprising.

There was little left for him to accomplish in mountain biking and the lure of a healthy professional career, not to mention a world of challenge in the rich cycling culture of Europe, drew him to thin tyres.

His stunning climb of Mt Wellington at the Tour of Tasmania had veteran cycling commentator Phil Liggett proclaiming that the boy from Victoria could win the Tour de France one day.

He was right.

But it wasn't a straightforward process for Evans who, riding for the Italian Mapai team at the Giro d'Italia (Tour of Italy), first made his international mark among the European pros riding when he claimed the Maglia Rosa - the pink jersey of that grand tour's leader.

"Who is Cadel Evans? We don't know you," asked the stage announcer of the neophyte rider in the leader's jersey.

"You know me now," was Evans' reply.

The young rider in his first grand tour wasn't able to keep the jersey - again, so close - but he would go on to claim it again in 2010.

le Tour

Despite his dramatic appearance at the Giro d'Italia, it took Evans a while to scale similar heights in the Tour de France, as team politics kept him from the race for a couple of years.

But when he did appear it wasn't long before he was riding at the front in the mountains, alongside the likes of Lance Armstrong.

Evans' first taste of the Paris podium came in 2007 when he finished just seconds behind Alberto Contador and, despite starting the following year as favourite with Contador's absence, Evans was only able to repeat his trip to the second step, less than a minute behind Carlos Sastre - so close, yet again.

Neither was his 2009 tour successful but his win at the World Championships erased that in an instant.

As World Champion, Evans was granted the Rainbow Jersey, colours he would wear in every race during the year and, in professional terms, a title second only to that of Tour de France winner.

Evans is a member of an exclusive club of riders permitted to wear flashes of rainbow colour on his jerseys as a former world champion, and he is entitled to wear them for the rest of his life.

Tour 2011

But 2011 was his year.

All Evans' years of experience, all his second places, all his issues with team politics, had prepared him well for the 2011 Tour de France.

His team was the strongest around him yet, his preparation never more focused on the one July race and, in a game where one unlucky crash can derail a season of plans, luck was riding with Cadel as well.

His doggedness through the mountains and his total domination of the final time trial have been celebrated long and hard.

Just where Evans' Tour win will sit in the history books - alongside names like Armstrong, Indurain, and Merckx - is a story yet to be written, but one thing is certain.